Edna O'Brien wrote her debut novel, The Country Girls, over the course of three weeks, between taking her sons to school and picking them up. It was published in 1960 and immediately caused a scandal in her native Ireland. Copies were burned, the book was banned and O'Brien's family were ashamed to be associated with her. Its story of two girls, hopeless romantic Cait and iconoclast Baba, leaving their strict rural convent school for city life in Dublin, was later continued in a trilogy of books.

Back in the 1970s, literary authors were international celebrities, appeared on TV talk shows and had their cover photographs taken by fashion photographers. The cover of this 1977 Penguin Book edition of The Country Girls is one of a series by Vogue photographer Barry Lategan, and we won’t be truly happy until we track down the full set.